The celebration underscores the nation’s achievements in creating modern, people-focused cities that prioritize quality of life, innovation, and environmental balance.

Saudi Arabia’s participation reflects its commitment to global urban initiatives that align with Vision 2030, emphasizing smart growth, sustainability, and inclusive urban living.

The celebration marks a moment of pride for the Kingdom as it continues to redefine urban living through ambitious development projects led by various government entities.

These projects aim to create vibrant, inclusive, and technologically advanced cities that meet the needs of both residents and visitors.

The Saudi Press Agency noted that these national efforts have resulted in improved infrastructure, enhanced public services, and better living standards, all contributing to a more sustainable and prosperous urban environment.

World Cities Day provides a global platform to share experiences, promote cooperation, and raise awareness about urbanization’s challenges and opportunities.

The event supports the New Urban Agenda, which encourages collaboration between countries to create cities that are resilient, inclusive, and designed for future generations.

For Saudi Arabia, this celebration highlights its role as a regional leader in urban innovation, planning, and sustainable development.

This year’s World Cities Day theme, “People-Centred Smart Cities,” emphasizes the importance of technology and innovation in improving urban life.

The theme resonates strongly with Saudi Arabia’s own goals under Vision 2030, which aim to make cities smarter, more efficient, and more connected.

By integrating digital technologies into urban design and governance, the Kingdom is ensuring that its cities evolve in ways that enhance mobility, environmental protection, and social engagement.

The United Nations has emphasized that digital transformation is reshaping how cities are managed, providing opportunities to improve services, infrastructure, and governance.

Saudi Arabia’s ongoing projects—such as NEOM, The Line, and other smart city initiatives—are examples of how the Kingdom is embracing these changes.

These projects embody the nation’s vision for sustainable urban growth that harmonizes modern living with environmental preservation and cultural heritage.

World Cities Day also serves to raise international awareness of the need for sustainable and equitable urban development.

Saudi Arabia’s active participation demonstrates its dedication to building cities that are inclusive, innovative, and environmentally responsible.

Through international partnerships, research collaborations, and investment in infrastructure, the Kingdom is contributing to global efforts aimed at creating livable and future-ready urban spaces.

As cities around the world face rapid population growth, technological disruption, and environmental challenges, Saudi Arabia is setting a benchmark for urban resilience.

Its focus on green architecture, renewable energy integration, and sustainable mobility solutions ensures that development remains people-centered and environmentally conscious.

These initiatives not only elevate the standard of living within Saudi cities but also position the Kingdom as a model for sustainable progress in the region.

The celebration of World Cities Day in Saudi Arabia reinforces the message that urbanization, when guided by thoughtful planning and innovation, can lead to prosperity, inclusivity, and long-term sustainability.

With strong leadership and vision, Saudi Arabia continues to build cities that inspire creativity, support communities, and foster global collaboration in urban development.

The reforms are part of the broader Vision 2030 initiative that is rapidly modernizing the Kingdom—socially, economically, and culturally.

A recent Wall Street Journal review of veteran journalist Karen Elliott House’s latest book, “The Man Who Would Be King,” offers a sweeping view of Saudi Arabia’s transformation under the leadership of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. The book profiles the man universally known as MBS, depicting him as a transformative force reshaping the Kingdom’s destiny and influencing the emerging global order.

“MBS… will play a critical and perhaps decisive role in shaping the new regional order,” the book asserts—echoing a growing consensus among international analysts and regional observers alike.

A Kingdom Reimagined

At the heart of MBS’s long-term vision lies NEOM, a $500 billion smart city project meant to position Saudi Arabia at the cutting edge of technological and scientific advancement. “MBS hopes that his new city—known as NEOM—will make Saudi Arabia a dominant force in technological innovation,” House writes.

The reforms are part of the broader Vision 2030 initiative that is rapidly modernizing the Kingdom—socially, economically, and culturally. House highlights how “a younger generation is now free to live something much closer to what their Western peers would recognize as a normal life,” referring to greater social freedoms, entertainment, and job market access for youth and women.

In what the book describes as a high-stakes economic shift, MBS is “placing many multibillion-dollar chips on different alternatives to oil… some will hit big.” From investing in green energy and AI to developing tourism, the Crown Prince is crafting new revenue streams for a nation long reliant on fossil fuels.

One such alternative is tourism—once a niche, now a national priority. “New sources of revenue, like tourism, will have to supplement oil wealth,” the book points out. Major initiatives such as AlUla, Qiddiya, and the Red Sea Project are helping reposition the Kingdom as a global cultural and leisure destination.

A Leadership Redefined

Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has also redefined the public face of Saudi leadership. “No Saudi ruler before him would be seen riding a dune buggy at a tourist attraction or posing for selfies at a restaurant,” House notes—an observation that underscores MBS’s populist appeal and generational relatability.

Yet this modern image is coupled with firm authority. “The MBS she describes is a formidable character bent on imposing his will,” writes House, underlining the intensity with which the Crown Prince is driving reforms, despite resistance from entrenched interests.

The scale of Saudi Arabia’s transformation is increasingly global in impact. With the Public Investment Fund (PIF) investing in sectors across the world—from tech and AI to entertainment and infrastructure—the Kingdom’s strategic decisions are shaping not just its own future, but also that of international markets and geopolitics.

“The decisions Saudi Arabia makes about investing its massive resources will help shape the global future,” House writes.

Saudi Voices Echo the Sentiment

Reacting to the review, Mohammed Alhamed, Founder and President of Saudi Elite, stated on X (formerly Twitter): “WSJ highlights MBS’s rising global impact through Karen Elliott House’s new book: ‘The Man Who Would Be King.’”

Alhamed added, “The MBS she describes is a leader who’s disrupting norms, reshaping the Kingdom, and steering the Middle East toward a modern and competitive future.”

His remarks reflect a broader sentiment within Saudi Arabia’s emerging elite class, who view the Crown Prince’s assertive agenda as a necessary leap toward relevance and resilience in a fast-changing world.

As the international community watches closely, MBS’s bold reforms continue to challenge perceptions of the Kingdom—and chart an ambitious course toward a post-oil, globally integrated Saudi Arabia.

According to a statement released on Wednesday, the flight test campaign lasted more than a week and was the culmination of 18 months of collaboration between NEOM, the General Authority of Civil Aviation, and Volocopter with the goal of establishing and expanding an electric urban air mobility ecosystem and test bed in NEOM.

The successful test flight of a Volocopter eVTOL (electric Vertical Take-Off and Landing) is a concrete illustration of NEOM’s role as a global accelerator and incubator of solutions to the most pressing problems facing humanity, according to Nadhmi Al-Nasr, CEO of NEOM. Improving connection and livability in cities all over the world and reducing carbon emissions will lead to the development of smart, safe, and sustainable mobility systems, which will result in a cleaner future for all.

Before the test flights, the parties collaborated carefully to guarantee complete regulatory compliance and safety.

GACA President Abdulaziz A. Al-Duailej commented on the accomplishment, stating that it is yet another consistent step towards achieving the objectives of the Kingdom’s aviation sector strategy “through innovation and employing emerging technologies to create new industries that contribute to the output GDP (gross domestic product) and create more jobs.”

“It also confirms GACA’s commitment to enabling the safe integration of innovative air transport patterns that enhance both the standard of living in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the mobility experience of people in urban areas,” he continued.

In order to expand sophisticated air mobility, NEOM and Volocopter established a joint venture in 2021, establishing NEOM as a collaborative, international living lab for the future of transportation.

“It is beyond exciting to see our work from the past 18 months come to fruition,” said Christian Bauer, chief commercial officer of Volocopter. We are happy to have set the stage for our upcoming partnership here in NEOM as the first eVTOL aircraft to test in Saudi Arabia.

According to the statement, the test campaign concentrated on the flight capabilities of the Volocopter aircraft in the local climate and surroundings as well as testing its integration into the area’s unmanned aircraft system traffic control system.

Volocopter eVTOLs will be essential to NEOM’s intelligent and environmentally friendly multimodal mobility system, which will run entirely on renewable energy produced by solar and wind energy sources.

EVTOL planes will serve as air taxis and emergency response vehicles, the statement claims. Compared to the helicopters that are frequently used today, these aircraft are cheaper to operate, more versatile, and quieter.

“They employ smart and autonomous capabilities that ensure both safety and sustained relevance in future contexts,” it continued. “They have smaller on-ground infrastructure footprint, fewer operating restrictions, and smaller on-ground infrastructure footprint.”

The $500 billion giga-project is now positioned as a pioneer in next transportation solutions thanks to the test flight announcement, which builds on NEOM’s approximately $190 million investment and joint venture with Volocopter.

The VoloCity air taxi is expected to receive type certification from Volocopter in 2024, opening the door to future commercial operations. Additionally, the business recently declared the start of VoloCity serial production at its German facility in Bruchsal, with a capability to deliver more than 50 aircraft annually under one-shift working circumstances.

Princess Sara bint Mashhour bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud has established a center that will enable young people to engage with STREAM subjects, which encompass Science, Technology, Reading, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics.

Princess Sarah said, “Ilmi will be a beacon of creativity, learning and accessibility”.

Named after the Arabic word for “my knowledge,” the upcoming ilmi center will serve as a Science Discovery and Innovation Center accessible to all. The 27,000 square meter facility, located in the Mohammed bin Salman Nonprofit City in Riyadh, is scheduled to open its doors in 2025. It has been designed with sustainability and creativity in mind, featuring extensive landscaping and integration with its natural surroundings, as well as making use of natural light.

The Ilmi initiative will provide support and funding for research projects in various fields, including artificial intelligence, renewable energy, and biotechnology. It will also offer training and mentorship programs for young researchers and entrepreneurs, as well as scholarships for students pursuing degrees in science and technology.

According to the SPA, the ilmi project seeks to inspire and empower Saudi Arabia’s youth to explore, create, and take on challenges in a practical manner. At its core, ilmi employs a distinctive approach that aims to provide a detailed and qualitative understanding of how young people in the country engage with STREAM subjects, allowing them to better connect with these fields.

Princess Sarah said, “Ilmi will offer all Saudi Arabia’s young and lifelong learners the ability to realize their potential, further drive advances in the Kingdom, and help shape the future. Together, I hope that we will all create ilmi, and inspire and support our next generation”.

The initiative is a philanthropic, non-governmental project supported by the Mohammed bin Salman Foundation (Misk) as one of its subsidiaries, and will operate in collaboration with Mohammed bin Salman Nonprofit City.

The center will feature permanent exhibitions organized around three central themes: Our World, Our Selves, and Our Inventions, while also addressing topics such as space, ecosystems, and artificial intelligence.

In addition, the center will host a range of events, installations, talks, performances, and learning programs in partnership with other organizations, all aimed at fostering a new STREAM community in Saudi Arabia.

Ilmi will utilize an integrated digital platform, along with a series of pop-up learning experiences throughout Saudi Arabia, starting this summer. These initiatives are designed to generate excitement and interest among youth, parents, families, and individuals of all ages and skill levels, with the goal of engaging them in STREAM subjects prior to the opening of ilmi’s physical location.

The Ilmi initiative is expected to further accelerate the growth of the country’s science and technology sector, and help Saudi Arabia achieve its goal of becoming a global leader in innovation. It will also create new opportunities for Saudi youth to pursue careers in science and technology, and contribute to the development of their country.

Ilmi will soon introduce an online platrform that includes a series of gamified design challenges aimed at exploring essential STREAM concepts, linking them to real-life scenarios, and inspiring participants to devise innovative solutions as part of a competition.

To facilitate this initiative, ilmi will conduct a series of live activations that delve into the STREAM content embedded in each digital challenge, encouraging families and friends to work collaboratively and build solutions in real-time.

The launch of the Ilmi initiative has been widely praised by the scientific and technological community in Saudi Arabia and beyond. It is seen as a major step towards achieving the country’s ambitious goals in science and technology, and a testament to the leadership and vision of Princess Sarah bint Mashhoor.

The Ilmi initiative is expected to attract the best and brightest minds in the country, and help Saudi Arabia build a strong foundation for scientific and technological progress in the years to come.

The TROJENA development is expected to be completed in 2026 and will offer outdoor skiing, a man-made freshwater lake and a nature reserve, according to the project’s website.

“With the unlimited support by the Saudi leadership & HRH Crown Prince to the sport sector we are proud to announce we have won the bid to host AWG TROJENA2029 as the first country in west Asia,” Sports Minister Prince Abdulaziz Bin Turki Al-Faisal said on Twitter.

NEOM is Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s most ambitious project under the kingdom’s Vision 2030 development plan to reduce reliance on oil and transform the economy, including by developing sports.

NEOM, a 26,500-square-km (10,230-square-mile) high-tech development on the Red Sea, will include zero-carbon city “The Line” as well as industrial and logistics areas.

The opportunities are part of the young prince’s Vision 2030, aimed at ending the kingdom’s dependence on oil and transforming it into a global investment power.

The prince, known in the West as MbS, plans to create new sectors and develop domestic projects that would create jobs for millions of Saudis, through the Public Investment Fund (PIF), the kingdom’s sovereign investment fund that acts as the main vehicle boosting investments at home and abroad.

PIF will finance 85% of these opportunities along with the Saudi private sector, while the remaining financing will come from capital investments from investors in the Gulf and globally, Saudi Press Agency said, quoting the prince’s speech.

The PIF is the cornerstone investor in a number of mega projects including a high-tech economic zone dubbed NEOM planned for an area close to the size of Belgium, an entertainment park outside Riyadh called Qiddiya being built on a site 2-1/2 times larger than Disney World, and a luxury tourist resort off the Red Sea coast that will span 50 islands.

This week, Prince Mohammed unveiled plans to build a zero-carbon city at NEOM, with infrastructure costs of $100 billion to $200 billion.

The world’s top oil exporter is expected to borrow tens of billions of dollars this year to fill state coffers hit by lower oil prices and to boost liquidity at the PIF.

NEOM is aiming to be a global center for technology and innovation…

“Rome was not built in a day,” the saying goes, and it is obvious that the challenges of building a new metropolis from scratch are enormous.

Most of the great urban centers of the world were organic in their development, usually beginning as natural centers for habitation and sustenance before growing to become dynamic and self-sustaining hubs, acting as economic, commercial and administrative magnets for their regional hinterland.

That is why NEOM, the 21st century metropolis planned for north-western Saudi Arabia, is such a revolutionary concept. NEOM is approaching the challenge of urban development from the other direction, by first taking an appropriate geographical location and then designing a city around it, with all that entails: Infrastructure, transport systems, human environment and the other essentials of urban life.

On top of this, NEOM is aiming to be a global center for technology and innovation, with hyper-connected communities living and working in an environmentally sustainable ecosystem that does not add to the pollution of the planet.

On Sunday, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman announced The Line, a 170-km-long strip that will form the backbone of the NEOM development, driving a pathway of modern development from the Red Sea to the desert valleys at the eastern end of the NEOM development zone.

It is important to realize that NEOM will be much more than The Line. The total development, at a total of 27,000 sq. km, is the equivalent of a small country, and will have within it all the essentials for a self-sustaining economy such as industry, agriculture, energy generation and utilities provision. It will be a global destination too, as a transport and logistics hub for the Middle East and an important aviation link for business and tourism.

But The Line will be its backbone, the urban focus of the whole development and the showcase for the wider project.

New cities of the past, such as Brasilia in Brazil or Canberra in Australia, were imagined as centers of government and administration rather than complete urban environments. Even Washington, DC — a new city in the beginning of the 19th century as the center for the federal government — took a long time to become the genuinely thriving metropolis it is today.

This encapsulates the unique challenge facing the master builders of NEOM. Not only are they attempting to build a new urban metropolis from a greenfield site, they are planning to do it in superfast time under the Vision 2030 strategy.

In addition, and crucially, they will need to finance that development in a sustainable and rational manner from the outset.

This is unique in history. Nobody sat down on Manhattan Island in the 17th century and added up the bill for building the future city of New York, nor were any other great cities put through a process of cost-benefit analysis from the outset.

NEOM’s policymakers find themselves having to fund the project from the outset. This requires making a solid business case to investors, including the government of Saudi Arabia, which will put up the bulk of the funds in the form of equity investment, at least in the early phases.

Thereafter, private and international investment will increasingly take a more prominent role, it is envisaged, as the global financial system becomes increasingly sold on the NEOM concept and — just as important — convinced about the rate of return on their investments.

The crown prince told broadcasters that The Line alone would cost between $100 billion and $200 billion, with the Public Investment Fund playing a big part in that.

Several big corporate and investment partners are already involved and invested in various aspects of The Line. But the serious work of explaining to the global financial community a detailed business case and investment rationale for the ambitious development now begins.

Article first published on Arab News.

Frank Kane is an award-winning business journalist based in Dubai. He tweets under @frankkanedubai.

The Israeli media reports earlier stated that, Israeli Prime Minister and the head of Israel’s secret service Mossad, Yosef Meir Cohen, secretly flew to NEOM city from Tel Aviv to meet Saudi Crown Prince.

Prince Faisal tweeted, “I have seen press reports about a purported meeting between HRH the Crown Prince and Israeli officials during the recent visit by @SecPompeo. No such meeting occurred. The only officials present were American and Saudi”.

According to Al Arabiya news agency, Prince Faisal said, “I received and bid farewell to Secretary of State Pompeo in the airport in NEOM and attended his meeting with the Crown Prince. There were no Israelis present”.